Hitchcock Poster Art

Hitchcock Poster Art

From the Mark H. Wolff Collection
Edited by Tony Nourmand and Mark H. Wolff
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, 1999

 For Hitchcockians (this is my blog so I can make up words if I want to), this is the perfect book for you! It showcases many of the different posters and lobby cards (extinct species of advertising) of all of the movies by Alfred Hitchcock. Starting with The Pleasure Garden, the first movie Hitchcock directed in 1925, through his last film in 1976, Family Plot the reader is treat to full color images of posters. You can see the change in advertising through the decades,

arts and crafts of the 20’s

then the full color portraits of the 30s,

the use of sort-of photographs of the 40s

continuing to refine the photograph in the 50s

and finally, showing more skin in the 60s.

 It’s also worth noting that the posters for countries other than the U.S. are either more lurid or more abstract. I guess Americans were (and are) too narrowminded to enjoy the more ‘artsy’ posters.

Italian, Marnie

Polish, Vertigo

Polish, The Birds

 

The book also introduced me to Hitchcock movies I didn’t know about. I tried getting all of them from the local library, but, alas, I was unsuccessful. Still, I have seen several new-to-me movies and they were really good! The editors of the book offer no critique of the movies; they present the posters as they are, along with a short description of the movie. For collectors, this is a good resource to add to your library.

 Rating: 4 out of 5 paws

 Reviewer: Simon